Indicator Swell Statistics, Autumn: Surf with Light or Offshore Winds

This image shows only the swells directed at Indicator that coincided with light winds or offshore conditions through a typical northern hemisphere autumn. It is based on 8724 predictions, one every 3 hours. The direction of the spokes show where quality surf generating swell comes from. Five colours illustrate increasing wave sizes. Blue shows the smallest swells, less that 0.5m (1.5 feet) high. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red shows largest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell happens.

The diagram implies that the most common swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was W, whereas the the most common wind blows from the WNW. The chart at the bottom shows the same thing but without direction information. For example, swells larger than 1.5 feet (0.5m) coincided with good wind conditions 4% of the time, equivalent to 4 days. Open sea swells exceeding >3m (>10ft) are unlikely to arise in a normal northern hemisphere autumn but 3% of the time you can expect swell in the range 1.3-2m (4-6.5ft) 3%, equivalent to (3 days). Taking into account the fraction of these swells that coincided with forecast offshore winds, and given the fact that Indicator is slightly protected from open water swells, we estimate that clean surf can be found at Indicator about 4% of the time and that surf is spoilt by onshore wind 7% of the time. This is means that we expect 10 days with waves in a typical northern hemisphere autumn, of which 4 days should be clean enough to surf.

IMPORTANT: Beta version feature! Swell heights are open water values from NWW3. There is no attempt to model near-shore effects. Coastal wave heights will generally be less, especially if the break does not have unobstructed exposure to the open ocean.